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  “As you count the grains,” said the magnificent voice, “they dissolve, revealing a green circle. Go to that circle.”

  The traveler could count nothing. He fruitlessly scoured his mind for recollections.

  “Your previous world is gone,” said a faceless spirit within the sands. “Striving to remember is useless.”

  Another spirit said, “Your current world bends not to your reasoning. Observe but do not decipher. Detach from the urge to comprehend.”

  “Perhaps we can assist him,” the first spirit said.

  “What do you suggest?” asked the second.

  “Rather than a suppression of memory, an overload. Permit him a window back into the universe where he died.”

  The traveler heard numerous recognizable voices: “Your movie is not the same as mine.” “And for crying out loud, don’t call them D&P. They hate that. Show some respect.” “Don’t you dare go back to sleep on me. You can’t get off the hook that easily.” “Congratulations are in order, my friend. Your candidate won in a landslide.”

  The voices and their content were familiar, yet only increased his bafflement. He sank deeper into the sand.

  ****

  Amid muddled reflections the traveler surrendered. He abandoned the analytic impulse, resigning to confusion. A mighty gust blew the surrounding sands wide open. A small tunnel formed. The traveler climbed through it into a new setting.

  A distant moon sprayed sparse light. Frigid wind screamed agony. A nearby forest of silhouetted trees spooked the traveler. A green light shined onto a severely cracked walkway. The path led to a cozy cabin with a partially caved-in roof. The front door of the cabin had a hole where a doorknob should have been. Had he visited a similar location in the past? He chose not to speculate on that question. “Observe but do not decipher.”

  A potent gale swept him over the walkway’s cracks toward the cabin. His momentum stopped at the door which swung open.

  Stepping into the cabin, the traveler spotted an enormous man in a corner to the left. The man held a humongous ax over his right shoulder. He wore a long beard dyed green. Solid green eyes matched his beard. His face was dirty.

  In the center of the snug room was a slight oak table where a little girl sat facing the traveler. Her hair was long and dark. Her eyes were shut. On the table, in her hands, was an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half. There was a chair opposite her. A refrigerator stood against the wall behind her.

  “I knew you when I was older – somewhere far from here,” the little girl said. She opened her eyes. They glowed an enchanting green. The traveler connected with those eyes.

  The little girl said, “Now you have completed the life cycle in a literal sense. You are beyond literal ramifications. How does that feel?”

  The traveler could not speak.

  She said to him, “Please have a seat.” He did so, across from her.

  The man with the ax said, “Some things you see are real. Other things are mere illusions.” He dropped his ax. It vanished before it could hit the floor.

  “Material objects are not concrete,” said the little girl. “They do not warrant your focus. Neither does memory. The past was never as authentic as it appeared.

  “This domain is tricky. Rather than fixate on befuddling imagery, envision an emptying of the hourglass. Eliminate the sands from your consciousness. Trouble not with what you see here. Take it in stride when images repeat themselves.”

  She pointed to a corner left of the traveler; he looked. The green-bearded man was gone like his ax. In his spot stood a replica of the little girl at the table. The twin child held an identical hourglass. Her eyes emitted a stream of vibrant green through the hourglass’s circle.

  Sounding like a full-grown woman, the twin said, “Time spins backward. I have regained my youth and duplicated myself to reinforce my message. Picture the sands disappearing and you will be reborn as well.”

  The traveler followed the emerald trail of the twin’s eyes, to the refrigerator behind the table. The dark-haired little girl stood next to the fridge, the green-bearded man’s ax in her hand. She swung the ax into the middle of the fridge, puncturing the appliance with a slit through which green beams saturated the room, blinding the traveler.

  “Can you locate me within this room?” the child asked. “Point me out or I shall fade away. You must …” Her voice trailed off.

  The traveler fainted. He woke in a dark hallway. Two faceless figures dragged him across the floor by the arms. Sand leaked from his pockets. He experienced fleeting déjà vu.

  His forced trip led him to a large window at the end of the hall. The faceless figures released him and exited. The traveler peered through the window. There was a warm den inside. In an easy chair by a fireplace sat a debonair man in his mid-sixties. On the floor, at his shoes, was the little girl from the cabin. Several feet behind them was a desk with a nameplate: Randolph Doppelganger. The traveler ignored the name’s familiarity.

  The debonair man read a book aloud to the little girl:

  “You must face what genuinely haunts you. Who or what is your enemy?”

  “My enemy?”

  “Yes, your enemy,” Lukas said. “What threatens you the most?”

  “I suppose the Permanent Regime. Like anyone who dares to be his own person, I am vulnerable to totalitarians. The Regime will likely destroy me.”

  “Except that you will have already destroyed yourself.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?” said I.

  “You are not your own person. You’re a facsimile of someone who once was. You’re a shadow. The Permanent Regime is not your enemy. There is no Permanent Regime and never was. It’s a cheap illusion.”

  “Horse pucky! Do you deny the tyranny that rules us? Do you declare it unreal?”

  Tugging at the debonair man’s leg, the little girl said, “What does ‘tyranny’ mean?”

  The man leaned back in his chair. “Tyranny is whatever infringes upon true happiness. You see, to the main character in this book, tyranny is himself, a personal history that he regrets. He cannot achieve self-actualization. He projects his neuroses onto a fictional entity, the Permanent Regime. The parallel universalist exposes that projection.

  “Permit me to relate this concept more specifically to you. You are terribly fearful of a world beyond your control. You project that fear onto a bearded man who wields an intimidating ax. That ax symbolizes tyranny. When you confront your actual fears, the ax will vanish. You will defeat tyranny. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really.”

  The man laughed sympathetically. “Let’s see what else the book tries to tell us.” He resumed reading aloud:

  “Yes. At the risk of revealing too much: the Regime is no more than a plot device. Set it aside. You have sold yourself short, purchasing a room in a house of sand. It was your attempt to escape.”

  “Escape what?”

  “Your own grief. Self-loathing. That feeling of not doing enough. You are lost, Sebastian.”

  The little girl had dozed off. The debonair man set the book on a table beside him. He picked up the child, put her over his shoulder, and carried her out of the room.

  Green light blinded the traveler. He lost consciousness.

  He woke in the small cabin. The little girl, bearded man, ax, and refrigerator were gone. At the oak table was a single chair. On the table rested an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half. Disregarding recent events, the traveler sat in the chair. He focused solely on the hourglass’s green circle – imagining the sands out of existence.

  ****

  The green of the circle expanded, absorbing the traveler. He lost awareness of self and surroundings. Time became meaningless as the sands evaporated.

  A loud mix of Gregorian chant and psychedelia blasted the traveler out of his emerald trance. He remained in his chair in the cabin. In a corner to his left stood the green-bearded man, holding his ax. Across from the traveler sat the dark
-haired little girl. Her hands were conspicuously empty.

  “Something is missing,” said the little girl.

  “I will recreate it,” the green-bearded man said.

  He flipped his ax into the air. As the object twirled, it morphed into the hourglass with the green circle on its lower half. The green-bearded man caught the hourglass.

  “This item is as true or false as you wish it to be,” he said, heaving the hourglass at the traveler. That item no longer exists, thought the traveler. The hourglass disappeared in mid-air.

  The cabin went pitch black. The traveler heard two voices – the first, female; the second, male:

  “What is your name?”

  “Sebastian R. Flemming the Third.”

  “Wow. That’s quite distinguished.”

  “I’ve never cared for it. I’d rather not have a number after my name.”

  Something sharp pierced the back of the traveler’s head. An electric current shot through him. He seemed to die a second death.

  But he soon woke in a darkened field. Thunder and lightning thrashed above. Rain pelted him. A glowing bubble hovered a few feet in front of him. It contained a breathtaking woman of black hair and hypnotic green eyes. The woman raised her arms to the sky and the inclement weather ceased.

  Smiling, she said, “Sebastian, why are you here?”

  The traveler’s words flowed from him unconsciously: “I am here to see you. Nothing has been right since I lost you.”

  “Surely you’ve realized that you never lost me.”

  “Can I touch you?”

  The bubble disintegrated. The woman stepped toward the traveler, placing her hand in his. Her touch sent another electric surge through him. The two of them suddenly stood inside the cabin, at the door.

  She said, “Fate is on the other side.”

  She opened the door. They stepped outside, hand in hand, penetrating the next phase of immateriality.

  CHAPTER 2

  PERCEPTIONS IN RADICAL OVERDRIVE

  A green wall towered before the traveler and the dark-haired woman. The wall’s length and height appeared infinite. How could the two characters surmount such a barricade? The woman grinned at the traveler and turned to the wall. Green laser beams shot out of her eyes, etching a sizeable hole into the barrier. She stepped through the opening into a large field. She stopped a few feet away and motioned for her companion to join her.

  The traveler strode through the wall, and became unhinged. Images of his Earthly self assaulted him. He saw each moment of his life with flawless clarity. Chief among his memories was the woman just beyond the wall. Her tragedy had fueled his journey. He was in his current spot because of her.

  “You believed that I died on Earth,” the dark-haired woman said. “My reality never dies. Neither does yours. Step forward to explore its offerings.”

  The wall’s hole expanded. The traveler fell into it and hit the ground. A thick forest encircled him. Rain pounded him, somehow bypassing the branches overhead. He raised his arms to the sky. The downpour ceased.

  His beautiful companion was gone. Everything around him – the ground, trees, rocks, critters, etc. – was blue. The peculiar tint destabilized the traveler. He hovered above and outside the scene. He watched himself walking down the blue path of a forest growing denser with blue trees materializing out of nothing. The walking version of himself was also blue.

  He heard the dark-haired little girl from the cabin of the hourglass: “Material objects are not concrete. I alter them at will.”

  The little girl snapped her fingers. Every item in the forest, including the traveler, switched to green. With another snap of her fingers, everything returned to blue.

  Suddenly the traveler was in the scene rather than out. He walked through the thickening forest, flanked to his right by the little girl. She was blue. To his left was the gigantic man from the cabin in the hourglass. Except for his green beard, the man and his ax were blue.

  The green-bearded man said, “The void is near. Everything else is a mere illusion.”

  The little girl glanced at the traveler with eyes of penetrating green. “Do you know why this burly fellow obsesses over illusions? He is an illusion! He is a product of fear. Smash the fear and its product disintegrates.”

  She snapped her fingers; the green-bearded man and his ax vanished. She laughed. “Distinctions between reality and illusion dwindle. Perception is king. The whole mad universe is whatever we wish it to be. Witness the grandest dreams becoming true.”

  The traveler had a vision of a wedding ceremony. He watched himself marrying the woman who brought him to the blue forest. He observed them making love on satin sheets in a room of gold. At climax, the fantasy bride peered at the observing traveler, her green eyes ushering him into the next vision:

  Millions paraded in the streets. Marching bands played victorious numbers. Celebrants danced. Fireworks filled the air. Everything moved in perfect rhythm together. The crowd waved placards bearing phrases such as “The Regime is Not Permanent” and “Eternal Peace and Freedom For ALL.” The world had shifted….

  The vision ended. Gone was the ubiquitous blue. So was the little girl. Cast out of the forest, the traveler stood at the golden gate of a castle several stories high. To each side of the structure were trees that shuffled about like animations.

  “Wake up!” a voice hissed.

  The traveler turned to his left and saw a cellmate from prison.

  The cellmate said, “Remember me? I’m Howard Freel. Recall that I mentioned parallel universalism when we were in jail. This is what I could not say then: parallel universalism is a trick. It utilizes falsehoods to expose shades of truth. There are no parallel universes; one Nature encompasses all. Every being is real; there are no nonentities. The singular universe splits into three realms: one outside the void, the human realm; one on the void’s cusp, the hourglass; one within the void, our present location.”

  “Jack wins in the end,” said another voice.

  The traveler turned to his right and saw his second cellmate, a disheveled man with long, greasy hair. The man said, “Jack wins in the end. Jack wins in the end.”

  Those five words echoed, even after the disheveled man disappeared. Freel also vanished. Thousands of birds soared from the surrounding trees. Flying toward the gate, they dissolved one by one. The gate opened. The traveler walked slowly toward the distant castle. Two familiars joined him as he strolled across the impeccable lawn: the little girl from the cabin and the green-bearded man with the ax. The trio arrived at ten steps leading to the castle’s front door. The green-bearded man went to the door and opened it. The traveler shot the little girl a confused expression.

  She said, “Go inside alone. We shall meet again.”

  The traveler went up the steps and through the door.

  He entered a tremendous ballroom. Everything was blue again – the walls, ceiling, floor, people, tables, paintings, sculptures, etc. Each item moved in and out of focus. Hundreds mingled in the spacious room. The traveler felt woozy.

  A tall lamp a couple yards away quickly transformed into a lanky, short-haired, big-lipped blue woman who lit a blue cigarette and blew perfectly rounded blue smoke rings out of her nose. Sneering at the traveler, she said, “I bet you’d like to turn this lamp on, you sick pervert.” She shrank into a blue candle.

  The traveler turned and saw a man with a normal head but a leather chair and wheels for a body. Rolling across the floor, past the traveler, the man called out, “You bastards better stop sitting on me. I am not a piece of furniture. I am a man. I …” Someone sat on the chair-man, who howled in pain.

  The room spun. The traveler walked toward a door at the far side of the room. He tried to ignore the oddities around him. Somersaulting men and women morphed into humongous tires that crushed other people and objects. Many wrestled with each other, transforming into feral animals as they scrapped. Bullets whizzed. The distance to the door expanded. The omnipresent blue faded. An ove
rpowering green light shot out from underneath the door. Finally reaching that door, the traveler threw it open and leapt into the next room.

  He paused to catch his breath. He was in a receptionist’s lobby. Green light dominated the lobby. An elderly woman sat at a desk across from him, scribbling furiously on a notepad. Without looking up, she said, “Please sit down.”

  The traveler looked to his right and saw a white couch at least forty feet long. At the near end of the couch sat a young man and woman, holding onto one another tightly. The traveler parked himself on the couch, several feet from the couple.

  On the wall opposite him was an elevator with a cryptic floor listing: 1, 3, 4, 5, 74, ?, 3.14, 8, 8, *, 12, ***, 999, INFINITY IN REVERSE. Above the floor listing was a green-lettered sign: The only way out is up. “Infinity in reverse” was a recognizable phrase that frightened him.

  “It’s okay, dear,” the young man on the couch said to the woman in his arms. “We’ve been through this before. I’m certain of it. Okay. Perhaps I’m not certain. We have been through this before, haven’t we?”

  Sobbing, the woman said, “I don’t know. Nothing makes sense.”

  The man smiled. “It all makes perfect sense.”

  “How can you say that? Things are too unreal. I’m not even sure who I am. And who are you? This is terribly confusing.”

  “You’re not sure who we are because we’ve become something else. We are what we were meant to be, as opposed to what we thought we were. You see?”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t see.”

  “Stop analyzing. Notice that guy on the couch with us? He’s eavesdropping on us, which diverts him from the enigmas of this environment. He was initially more confused than we are. By focusing on something else now, he ascends to the top floor without moving an inch.”

  The woman stopped crying and laughed. “We have been through this before. That man on the couch proves it. We had a conversation with him. Remember?”

  “Maybe not. What if our conversation with him actually occurs later in the story? Time is out of sync. We have been through this before … and we haven’t.”